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Having marked its 99th anniversary on August 1, the People’s Liberation Army is now just a year away from its centenary goals, with its evolution highlighting the past, present and future of China’s military strategy. In the fourth part of a series, Amber Wang looks at the PLA’s pursuit of emerging technologies. In an influential book published nearly three decades ago, a PLA military strategist a...
A viral clip renews the headlined question for me. Jameela Jamil, a British actress of Pakistani and Indian descent, caused a public row in the UK for her interview last month on Yestergays, a pop culture podcast. She said: “Americans think British people are so sweet, which is crazy because British people are truly the most evil people in history. Like, they are Thanos. They owe 43 trillion to In...
A €1 million (US$1.15 million) lottery ticket was recovered from the trash in Italy after the frantic winner called on binmen to help her retrieve it, the waste management company said. The instant win ticket was “miraculously still in one piece” after rubbish workers combed through mounds of trash on their truck, said Roberto Nicola Toscano, the administrator of the SANB company in Italy’s southe...
A €1 million (US$1.15 million) lottery ticket was recovered from the trash in Italy after the frantic winner called on garbagemen to help her retrieve it, the waste management company said. The instant win ticket was “miraculously still in one piece” after garbage workers combed through mounds of trash on their truck, said Roberto Nicola Toscano, the administrator of the SANB company in Italy’s so...
The coastguard rescued the crew of an Indian-flagged commercial ship that sank in the Red Sea on Tuesday after an attack, a local official in the Yemeni city of Mokha said, with New Delhi condemning the “unprovoked” aggression. Yemen’s internationally recognised government blamed the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for the attack, according to the official Saba news agency. Last month, the Houthis decla...
Latin American countries should resist pressure to choose between the United States and China and use their vast reserves of lithium, copper and other strategic resources to strengthen their negotiating power, according to a high-level commission co-chaired by former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and former Colombian president Ivan Duque. But the commission acknowledges that the region’s roo...
Ukraine on Tuesday accused Russia of committing a war crime after a video was released showing a drone chasing down and wounding a vegetable seller in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. Footage released by Ukrainian police shows the drone pursuing a man around a van being used as a street stand before exploding as he dives for cover behind the vehicle. Police said the man in his 50s survived...
It started with Instagram posts that suggested Spain’s border with Morocco was opening up. Then came Facebook users tracking coastguard patrols and TikTok videos showing where to swim. After many shares and comments, thousands of Moroccans became convinced that Europe was suddenly within reach. Within hours, young people began heading towards the border with the Spanish territory of Ceuta in North...
US senators voted along party lines on Tuesday to advance US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer as attorney general after he formally scrapped a controversial US$1.8 billion fund created through the administration’s settlement of a lawsuit brought by the president. Todd Blanche, who became deputy attorney general after Trump took office, has been serving as acting attorney general sin...
US senators voted along party lines on Tuesday to advance US President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer as attorney general after he formally scrapped a controversial US$1.8 billion fund created through the administration’s settlement of a lawsuit brought by the president. Todd Blanche, who became deputy attorney general after Trump took office, has been serving as acting attorney general sin...
An 89-year-old patient at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital is highly likely to have contracted legionnaires’ disease after drinking water from a contaminated dispenser, health authorities have said. The Centre for Health Protection confirmed on Tuesday that samples from cooled boiled water dispensers at the private hospital in Happy Valley tested positive for Legionella pneumophila at levels ...
More American titans of artificial intelligence are describing Chinese open-weight models as better for AI safety and security than closed-source models, challenging the long-standing claim by US closed-source AI model developers such as Anthropic that open-source models present a threat to society. “From what I’m seeing, I think open-weight models seem safer to me than closed-weight models,” AI p...
The World Bank on Tuesday called on developing countries to embrace artificial intelligence technology tools to deliver better governance outcomes, warning that they risked being left behind if they failed to do so. “AI has thrown developing economies a lifeline, and they should seize it,” Indermit Gill, chief economist of the World Bank Group, said as the organisation launched its annual World De...
A Chinese speaker today might describe their day at work as first making a “PPT” (a PowerPoint presentation) and then having to “PS tu” (Photoshop an image). After clocking off, they might “chang K” (sing karaoke) with friends before taking the “C wei” (centre spot) in a group photo. These novel phrases spring from the widespread habit of adopting English abbreviations directly into daily speech, ...
When Liao Heng joined Huawei Technologies’ chip-design unit in 2016, he was sceptical about whether China could ever build world-class semiconductors. A former child prodigy who entered Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University in 1987 at age 14 before moving to Princeton University for postdoctoral research, Liao had spent over a decade in the United States watching what he described as a “long s...
Taiwan will begin its annual war games on Wednesday, testing for the first time its ability to counter a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) maritime blockade in the western Pacific during the 10-day exercise. The 42nd edition of the Han Kuang exercise, the island’s largest annual military drill, will incorporate US military planning practices to improve coordination and mission command. It will also t...
We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering Latin American relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Chile’s Kast courts China day after US hits exports with forced labour tariff Chilean President Jose Antonio Kast received China’s ambassador to Santiago, Niu Qingbao, at the La Moneda P...
We have selected seven of the most interesting and important news stories covering global relations from the past few weeks. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Nato launches defence projects to counter Russia and China Nato member states unveiled a series of defence initiatives in June aimed at strengthening weapons development, production and supply c...
A seven-year-old boy escaped with minor injuries on Tuesday after a rear wheel came off a double-decker bus travelling on a busy road in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. Police received a report at 3.25pm that the KMB route 86 bus was travelling along Cheung Sha Wan Road towards Kwai Chung when the rear-left wheel came loose, just outside Cheung Sha Wan Plaza. The wheel struck and dented a metal rail...
A seven-year-old boy escaped with minor injuries on Tuesday after a rear wheel came off a double-decker bus travelling on a busy road in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. Police received a report at 3.25pm that the KMB route 86 bus was travelling along Cheung Sha Wan Road towards Kwai Chung when the rear-left wheel came loose, just outside Cheung Sha Wan Plaza. The wheel struck and dented a metal rail...
Hong Kong police are searching for a woman who allegedly splashed a “cream-like” liquid on the six‑year‑old son of actress and beauty queen Grace Chan Hoi‑lam at a cinema in Admiralty, following a dispute over the child’s behaviour during a movie screening. A police source said on Tuesday that Chan, winner of the Miss Hong Kong 2013 pageant and wife of TVB actor Kevin Cheng Ka‑wing, filed a report...
French and British vessels saved 157 migrants after their boat caught fire while trying to cross the Channel on Tuesday, authorities in both countries said. It is one of the largest such rescue operations reported since records began in 2018. “A small boat caught fire on the boundary between French and British waters, forcing its occupants to jump overboard” on Tuesday morning, the prefect’s offic...
Hong Kong recorded the first fatal paediatric case of influenza this year after a seven-year-old boy died on Tuesday, nine days after displaying symptoms. The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said that the boy, who had been in good health, developed a cough and runny nose on July 27 and a fever on Saturday, before his condition deteriorated on Monday when he became less responsive. He was admitt...
Clashes between the United States and European Union are becoming the “new normal” with competition over tech regulations at the “core”, according to an analysis published by a leading Chinese think tank. Guo Mingxu, head of the European Economy Programme at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, cited a recent row about hefty fines imposed on US tech giants for breaching Eu...
The global AI race is becoming a contest over the international order. In June, the US convened the second summit under the 24-economy Pax Silica around secure supply chains, AI infrastructure and trusted technology partnerships. In July, all 193 UN member states met in Geneva for the inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance. Days later, 29 countries signed the agreement establishing the World A...
Japan’s latest defence white paper warns of China’s growing ability to sustain military operations farther into the western Pacific Ocean, while pledging to bolster its own monitoring systems, strike capabilities and ammunition production. Released on Tuesday, the 610-page document cautions that Beijing is strengthening its aircraft carrier force as it steadily improves its capacity to operate in ...
Chinese artificial intelligence company MiniMax has open-sourced its new H3 video model but imposed licensing conditions on users in major overseas markets including the US and European Union, underscoring the copyright challenges in generative video AI. After the Shanghai-based company released the model’s weights to developers on Monday, users found that the licence restricted free access in the...
Hong Kong and Macau police have arrested eight people in a crackdown on an investment scam syndicate that cheated more than 200 people out of nearly HK$100 million (US$12.75 million) by promoting itself as a pioneer of “kinetic coffee philosophy”. Operating under the name Fun Coffee, the syndicate established a presence in Hong Kong last year. It says on its website that it is a coffee investment ...
More than 1,000 applicants have registered for a new combined test for taxi and ride-hailing services in Hong Kong, as lawmakers expect more people to sign up to meet demand for ride-hailing drivers once the city’s regulatory regime takes effect next year. The initial response came after the Transport Department replaced the stand-alone taxi driver examination with a new combined test, which allow...
Hong Kong authorities have set up fences and surveillance cameras at a reservoir and warned they could take legal action against trespassers, after a group was filmed entering a spillway to take photos while the facility was discharging water. A South China Morning Post reporter observed on Tuesday that two barriers and a surveillance camera had been set up at Ho Pui Reservoir in Tai Lam. After fo...
